by Andy Maslen
The woman with the cropped blonde hair and stern expression checked out of the hotel five minutes later, paying cash. As she left the hotel, she looked west.
“I’m coming for you, Adam,” she said, a small smile on her ruby lips.
70
Takeover Bid
LATER THAT DAY, Other Stella lit a cigarette and took a drag, pulling the smoke deep into her lungs. They were sitting on a bench in a small park behind a church. Stella had kept the chemo cap but ditched the wheelchair. The headgear was doing a marvellous job of deflecting attention. On the walk from her hotel to the church, she’d noticed and approved of the way other pedestrians caught her eye then swiftly looked away, fearful, perhaps, that they might catch the insidious disease eating away at her. Her outfit was dowdy, a grungy pair of dark-grey-and-brown camouflage trousers and a shapeless black sweatshirt beneath her jacket. And the fact she was apparently talking to herself guaranteed that any office workers looking for a quiet spot to eat their sandwiches gave her and her bench a wide berth.
“He’s waiting for you, you know,” Other Stella said, tapping ash from the tip of her cigarette.
Stella shrugged.
“So? What’s he going to do? He can’t run, can he? He’s got no option but to stay put and wait for me.”
“Maybe. You killed Ferenczy and his goons last night so Collier might not’ve got the news yet. He might still believe he’s on your tail.”
“Yeah, well he’s going to find out soon enough. But I’m not going to give him the chance to recruit anyone else to come after me.”
“What’s the plan then, chief?”
“I’m going to take the fight to him. Right to him. His office.”
Other Stella threw her head back and laughed, though the sound was harsh and humourless.
“Perfect! Because you’ll easily get away with that. There’ll be SCO19s coming at you with machine guns before you reach the lift.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’ll be dead and I’m not planning on leaving anyway. Or not upright.”
Other Stella’s eyes narrowed.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean? Once Collier’s dead, I’m finished. They’ll all be gone and I can rest. Be with them.”
“Who?” Other Stella asked in a demanding tone.
“My husband and daughter. Try and keep up. That’s what this is about. What it’s always been about.”
Other Stella shook her head.
“No. Absolutely not. I won’t allow it.”
“What on earth do you mean, you ‘won’t allow it’? It’s not up to you. And as you’re not real, I don’t see how you can stop me.”
Other Stella slid along the bench until she was snug against Stella’s left side.
“Oh really? Is that what you think?”
Then she darted her right hand out and gripped Stella’s left wrist, digging her fingernails in so hard it made Stella cry out with pain, causing a couple on the next bench along to look over, frowning, before returning to their lunch.
“I think,” she continued, “you ought to be very careful what you do. This is my life, too, and maybe I’m not so ready to shuffle off this mortal coil just because you’ve had enough. I’m having fun offing the bad guys.”
Rubbing her wrist, Stella stared into the other woman’s eyes. She dropped her voice to a whisper.
“Not. Your. Choice. Now fuck off, I can’t think straight with you hanging around.”
She shook her head violently, eyes squeezed shut, and when she opened them, and the world had stopped see-sawing, Other Stella was gone.
Two hours later, by which time all the suits had left to return to their cubicles or shared workspaces, Stella nodded with satisfaction. The plan was complete.
She walked to a new hotel, keeping to back streets and once again marvelling at how easy it was to escape the crowds and the traffic of this global city, simply by stepping off the main thoroughfares and into the network of much older streets that criss-crossed every part of London.
After taking a shower, and dressing in jeans, T-shirt and the biker jacket, she stood in front of the mirror. Walking into Paddington Green toting a sawn-off shotgun would never have worked, which is why she’d ditched the lupara without a second thought. But a Glock? Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.
She sat on the bed, slid out the magazine, unloaded all the rounds and then painstakingly reloaded them, pressing down on the uppermost round to check the spring was still returning it to the correct position. Thanks, Danny, she thought. You were so generous with your firearms knowledge, and now you’ve probably lost your job, all for a quick shag and a shoulder to cry on.
With the magazine snug inside the butt, she stood, stuck the pistol into the back of her jeans waistband and headed out.
It took her half an hour to reach the front door of Paddington Green nick. She paid the taxi driver and climbed out onto the pavement. She was standing outside the building she still thought of as her station, despite the recent weeks she’d spent consorting, conspiring and committing crimes with some very serious villains indeed.
She pulled her Metropolitan Police ID out of her jacket pocket and slung the lanyard round her neck.
Collier sighed. The third envelope lay discarded on his desk. Held between thumb and finger was a curl of dark-brown hair, singed and partially melted. This time, there was a note.
You could take this to forensics. But that would waste resources. So I’ll save you the trouble. Female. Indian. Age 34. Lawyer. Right-wing views. Initials HAR. And very, very dead.
71
The Prodigal Daughter
INSIDE THE STATION, Stella nodded to the civilian receptionist, who was busy on the phone but nodded and smiled back vaguely. She swiped her ID to gain access to the part of the station reserved exclusively for the people who worked there: the uniforms, detectives, forensics bods, pathologists, lab assistants, executive officers and admin staff. As she walked through the security gate, the receptionist was already making another call. The woman hadn’t recognised Stella, but why would she, with or without the blonde crop? There were thousands of cops and police staff coming and going, and the receptionist could have been new or just lost in her own thoughts.
“So far, so good, Stel,” Other Stella said. “But if you don’t mind, I’ll take it from here.”
Stella remained tight lipped, which earned her a frown from an oncoming uniformed sergeant she vaguely recognised. But she shook her head once he was past her in the corridor.
You’re not real, she thought, addressing this destructive part of her in her mind.
“Oh, I’m real, all right. I’m the part of you that gets things done these days. You’ve gone soft.”
I’m here, aren’t I? With a Glock 17 down the back of my jeans?
“Yes, and as I said, that’s an excellent start. But I don’t want any last-minute wobbles from you. So I’m—” Stella stumbled as Other Stella fought for ascendancy in her head, then righted herself and strode on, head held high, “—taking charge.”
In the CID office of the Specialist Crime and Operations Division’s Homicide and Major Crime Command, Frankie O’Meara’s phone buzzed with an incoming text. She glanced down at the screen, frowned, then got up from behind her desk.
Two minutes later, Stella pushed through the double doors.
“Boss!” DS Jake Tanner said, looking up from his computer keyboard and smiling. “Nice hair, by the way. Very punk.”
Stella grinned at Jake.
“I should go AWOL more often, if that’s the welcome I get. How’ve you been, Jake?”
“Oh, you know, OK. I mean The Model told us all about your, well, your relapse. But you’re better now, right? You’re going to finish your light duties stint and come back to kick our arses around on crime scenes?”
Something like that. If by ‘light duties’ you mean putting a couple of bullets into Collier’s face.
“Yeah. I’ll be running you ragged in a few
weeks. And you’re on coffee runs until I say different, OK?”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
Stella looked around the room.
“Frankie not in today?”
He looked around then back at her.
“No, she’s in. I saw her a minute ago. Must have gone to get a tea or something.”
She leant towards Jake.
“Is he in? The Model, I mean. I need to talk to him.”
Jake glanced over her shoulder at the closed door to Collier’s office then looked back at Stella.
“He is. In fact he hardly goes out these days. Stays closeted in there with the blinds drawn and the door closed. Something’s really got him spooked. Maybe he’s up for a promotion and he doesn’t want to jinx it.”
Stella just nodded, patted Jake on the shoulder and moved past him, heading for Collier’s office, which was hidden by blinds and a closed door, just as Jake had described.
Her unannounced arrival in CID had drawn curious stares from her former colleagues. But as she closed the distance between her and Collier – the final member of the conspiracy to shatter her life – they faded from her peripheral vision. Then her peripheral vision itself shut down, as her focus narrowed to a tunnel right in front of her. The hubbub of ringing phones, conversations at whiteboards, filing-cabinet drawers being opened and slammed shut again and the hum and whirr of dozens of PCs faded. In their place was a high-pitched ringing and the faint but unmistakable sound of a little girl singing. Ring-a-ring-a-roses, a pocket full of posies. Atishoo! Atishoo!
“We all fall down,” Stella muttered, as she arrived at the slab of brown wood affixed with an aluminium nameplate revealing its inhabitant to be DCSupt. A Collier.
She raised her fist to knock, but stopped the motion in midair. Idiot! Who knocks on their victim’s door?
She grasped the handle, twisted it and pushed the door open, stepping through and closing it behind her in a single, flowing movement.
Collier was on the phone. He looked up and replaced the handset without saying another word. He didn’t seem unduly nervous. Which was odd, considering he must have known why she was there.
“Stella. Come in,” he said. “Take a seat.”
She did as she was told, keeping her back to the door and sitting forward a little on the chair.
“I’ve come to kill you,” she said.
“Yes, I rather suspected you might.”
“Did you hear about Ferenczy?”
“Hear what?”
“I killed him.”
Collier tutted and shook his head.
“Stella, if you’re going to start confessing to a murder, well, a murder and an attempted murder, don’t you think you should have a lawyer with you? Or a rep from the Police Federation at the very least?”
“Fuck you, Collier! And it’s not a murder. You’re forgetting your friends in Pro Patria Mori. Ramage, Fieldsend, Ragib, Howarth. They’re all dead. By my hand.”
Collier frowned.
“Pro—what did you say? Are you sure you wouldn’t like to see the FMO? You look a little pale. Although it could just be that striking new haircut. I’m not sure blonde suits you.”
This wasn’t going the way it was supposed to. Collier should be begging for his life, or at least bargaining for it. Instead he was acting even more smug than usual. She’d had enough. She reached behind her and pulled the Glock from her waistband.
72
Officer Down
THE TRIGGER WAS easy to pull. No recoil. No noise. No flash. No smell of burnt propellant. Just a slight vibration in her wrist as the hair-thin wires spooled out behind the barbed darts. She watched as they embedded themselves in the exposed skin at the base of Stella’s neck and delivered their payload.
Stella jerked upwards in her chair, dropping the pistol to the carpet as she spasmed like a fish caught on a hook. Her spine arched over the back of the chair and several joints popped with the sound of bubble wrap being squeezed. The chair overturned and she fell to the floor, facedown and jerking.
Shaking with nerves, but keeping her finger on the Taser’s trigger, Frankie O’Meara stepped out from behind the array of tall, leafy pot plants Collier had previously arranged in a screen. She bent to pick up the Glock. She placed it on Collier’s desk, switched off the Taser then handcuffed Stella’s floppy hands behind her back before she could move.
Collier drew the pistol towards him by inserting a pen through the trigger guard. He looked up at Frankie.
“Thank you, Frankie. I have to admit I wasn’t sure your plan would work. I think it’s safe to say your next promotion is in the bag.”
“Thank you, sir. I don’t take any pleasure in it. Stel’s a good cop. Something must have gone wrong, you know, the grief?”
“You heard what she said, didn’t you? I think it’s fair to say something went a little more than ‘wrong.’ She’s clearly lost her mind. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to call someone to take care of DI Cole.”
Frankie looked down at Stella, who was struggling to get into a sitting position, then back at Collier, who’d raised his phone to his ear. Collier made a shooing gesture with the backs of his fingers. Collier’s call connected just as Frankie closed the door behind her. He spoke, picking up the pistol as he did so and pointing it at Stella.
She glared back at him, but she realised she was in trouble, possibly the first real trouble since she’d begun hunting down Leonard Ramage. Collier was speaking.
“Anthony. Could you come to my office, please?” He nodded. “Yes, she’s here and under control. But we don’t have long.” Another nod.
Collier ended the call, then looked down at Stella.
“One move and I’ll shoot. Although my contemporaneous notes, which I’ll write up in a minute, will show that I counselled you to be calm and quiet as I was concerned for your mental welfare.”
She glared up at him but remained still.
A sharp trio of knocks on the office door made them both look round.
The station pathologist opened the door, stepped through and closed it behind him without looking back, just as Stella herself had done.
“How can I be of assistance, Detective Chief Superintendent?” he asked with a smile.
“Doctor Akuminde,” Collier said. “This officer just burst into my office, threatened to kill me with a firearm, then boasted of having committed a number of murders. It’s all recorded,” he pointed to his phone, “but quite honestly, what’s needed here is compassion. DI Cole needs help.”
Akuminde nodded.
“He’s the killer!” Stella shouted. “Him and his murderous friends in Pro Patria Mori!”
Akuminde ignored her and cleared his throat.
“DI Cole, may I call you Stella? You’re not well. We’re going to get you to a hospital where you can be taken care of.”
He and Collier grabbed Stella by her elbows, jerked her to her feet and turned her towards the door. Collier spoke.
“I am so sorry it’s come to this, Stella. I knew your grief was overwhelming, but I had hoped putting you on light duties would give you time to adjust. Right now, a hospital is the best place for you.”
Stella struggled but she knew it was no use. The handcuffs reduced her to the helpless status of the prisoners she had so often frogmarched into or out of crime scenes, interview rooms and their own homes. She wanted to scream and shout, to hurl insults over her shoulder at Collier, who she knew would have that smug smile on his face as he watched her being led away. But something in her made her hold back. In the face of the openmouthed stares of the detectives in the CID office, she held her head still, looked straight ahead and let herself be marched out, in the firm but not painful grip of Dr Akuminde.
As he walked her to the lift, Stella realised that it was she, Stella Cole, who was back in the driving seat. Other Stella had vanished once again.
Stella smiled. Oh, the irony. Collier’s actually right. I am crazy.
THE END
&nbs
p; Also by Andy Maslen
The Gabriel Wolfe series
Trigger Point
Reversal of Fortune (short story)
Blind Impact
Condor
First Casualty
Fury
Rattlesnake
Minefield (novella)
The DI Stella Cole series
Hit and Run
Hit Back Harder
Hit and Done
Let the Bones be Charred (coming soon)
Other fiction
Blood Loss - a Vampire Story
Non-fiction
Write to Sell
100 Great Copywriting Ideas
The Copywriting Sourcebook
Write Copy, Make Money
Persuasive Copywriting
About the Author
Andy Maslen was born in Nottingham, in the UK, home of legendary bowman Robin Hood. Andy once won a medal for archery, although he has never been locked up by the sheriff.
He has worked in a record shop, as a barman, as a door-to-door DIY products salesman and a cook in an Italian restaurant. He eventually landed a job in marketing, writing mailshots to sell business management reports. He spent ten years in the corporate world before launching a copywriting agency.
As well as the Stella Cole and Gabriel Wolfe thrillers, Andy has published five works of non-fiction, on copywriting and freelancing, with Marshall Cavendish and Kogan Page. They are all available online and in bookshops.